


Life As We Shouldn't Know It

by Sheneya



Category: Constantine (TV)
Genre: AU, M/M, Magic, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 18:05:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17085134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheneya/pseuds/Sheneya
Summary: John didn't quite do it right.  But it still worked.





	Life As We Shouldn't Know It

It was 47 lives, plus his own that night. He could die 47 more times after the fire, then he’d die permanently.

Except John hadn’t realised he’d done the spell slightly wrong. Drunk as he’d been, he’d missed a few words, less than half a sentence. The spell had obviously worked, but that one little mistake had changed it from being an single use spell… to an ongoing one.

It wasn’t until much later that they’d realised it. At first, they thought maybe they hadn’t been keeping track correctly, that their calculations were off. They even searched the old, burnt out bar, thinking maybe, even after a thorough search, the firefighters had missed a few bodies… or the paramedics… or the police. But there was nothing.

It had eventually been Zed, browsing her way through John’s book collection, who had found the information they’d needed to figure it out.

Chas was collecting the lives of people they’d lost AFTER the fire. Not everyone, but if they died close to him, his body would just suck it up like sponge.

And John still didn’t know how to stop it.

Chas thought, looking down at the tiny seeming man shifting restlessly in his arms, that it was the first time John had actually clung to him. The first time he had actually shown that he was terrified of Chas’s abandonment.

That had always been John’s problem, he truly believed that even though it had been entirely by accident, the fact that it had happened automatically made him the worst person in the world.

Chas sighed as he remembered nodding to Zed as she had, realising that they needed some time alone together, made her way out the front door, her phone already out, presumably to give Jim Corrigan a quick call, who knows, maybe they’d spend the night together.

He, on the other hand, had wrapped one arm around John’s waist and tucked the other one under his thigh before lifting the still clingy man up and carrying him to Chas’s room. All John had done while he was doing this is shift until he was practically wrapped around Chas.

For all that Chas was the taller of the two, he sometimes forgot just how… long-limbed John tended to be.

Anyway, he’d carried him to Chas’s room and that was why they were both currently laid out on the bed.

John had made a solid attempt to seduce him, but Chas felt that it wasn’t what they needed tonight.

John was very still for a while after Chas’s whispered. “It’s alright John, you’ve already got me, you don’t need to offer yourself up like this every time. I’m not leaving. We can always do it later.”

It was different, he’d talked, they never did talking. He wasn’t surprised when John didn’t talk back either, everyone at their own pace.

So he just let his words sit there, they’d been heard, and they’d been listened to. He let his hand stroke the small of John’s back, soft, reassuring.

He left John’s hands curled up in his shirt as he slowly fell asleep, let them ruck it up a little, until rough thumbs would gently knead into his stomach in their sleep, occasionally squishing his softer belly fat.

And he pretended that the dampness soaking the area near his chest was sweat, from being too hot with another person laying right on top of him. For John’s sake.

Because John couldn’t cry, not while he was awake. Only when he slept.

And only when he was asleep on Chas.

“Of course I’m not leaving you idiot, I love your dumb arse too damn much. Almost as much as you love mine you clueless bastard.”


End file.
